Excerpt: Vagabonds

Vagabonds
By Hysan Gearring
One
Is this where I’m supposed to give up all my secrets? Fuck that. I’m not putting out without dinner and a movie. You’ll know as much about me as you need to know when you need to know it. The first rule of playing the long con is this: trust no one.

Did you get that?

Remember, you’re either dealing with other cons or with straights, and none of them can be trusted. Someone tells you they have your best interests at heart and want to help you out, look down to make sure they’re not stealing your wallet.

Is that too cynical for your sensitive soul? Aw, I’m sorry.

I can tell you this much, I didn’t get where I am by worrying about a few hurt feelings. When I was ditched by my worthless-ass crack whore of a mom and ended up in the system, I learned pretty quickly that you had to be brutal and rude to get through this world, maybe just to get a sliver of sunlight to shine through your grimy window.

I know my worth. I’m not some naïve jerk who thinks if he just gets one more score, he can retire to a farm and tend the rabbits. I’m in this for the rest of my life, however long that is. I’m also not so deluded that I think I serve a purpose, helping to educate the masses, make them a little more jaded and little less vulnerable. I rip people off.
Big shock, you’re thinking, your kind are always thieves. Fuck you. I’m not some guy who robs old ladies at knife point or snatches purses from careless college co-eds. I can get pretty much anyone to give me money, and not even realize I’m stealing from them.

Don’t believe me?

I’m looking at this slob, this piece of shit car salesman, Larry, who has to be at least three hundred seventy five or three fifty. Like it matters, the way he’s shoving his sandwich down his disgusting gob he’s clearly going to die in a year from a heart attack. He’s trying to sell me a car I know is a piece of shit that every consumer report has rated most likely to explode if you hit seventy miles per hour. He’s wearing a suit only Stevie Wonder would’ve picked out, and nearly catching me between the eyes with sandwich shrapnel every time he tells a lie. He keeps looking back and forth from me to the car I don’t want, but I never take my eyes off the silver Ferrari in the front of the lot.

“You’ll never find a better car,” he whines, wiping mustard from his tie, “top of the line, this one. And you look like someone who appreciates the best…William. Can I call you Billy?”

That’s my name. William. William Carson. And no, he couldn’t call me Billy. And neither can you. Not Bill, Billy, fucking Will or Willie. My name is William. I hate that shit. Amateurs like tubby will always pretend to be your friend, pat you on the back, call you a “y” name which is synonymous with “buddy” and then bend you right over and bang you in the ass the first chance they get.

Is William Carson my real name? What the fuck do you care?
“William is fine.” Some rules I will not break, no matter how much they might grease the wheels. “I’m more interested in that Italian number you’ve got in the front of the lot. As I’ve mentioned, money is no object.”

I did my best P Diddy act, adjusting my cream colored suit coat and looking over my shades at my corpulent pigeon.

Hey, I know how to intimidate.

Money was no object because I’d just convinced twelve investors in Denver that I would make them 10 million dollars richer. Each. So they each paid me half a million to get started. Of course, by the time they probably figured out that my credentials were phony and my references were out of date, I was already back on the other side of the country.

Amazing, isn’t it? The richer someone is, the more likely they are to want even more money. They’re willing to believe anything is possible, too. Why not? They’ve already achieved the American Dream, or at least their concept of it. My American Dream is to take all their shit and help myself forget that for six years of my life I survived on powdered milk and ramen noodles.

“I’m saving the Ferrari for another client. I’m afraid I can’t sell it to you.”

I flashed my best politician grin, the one you get when they promise not to raise your taxes. “Do I look like the type who takes no for an answer, Larry? I’m willing to pay for any extras you want to tack on. But I’m not leaving here without that car.”

Larry’s face turned a different shade of red and he brushed his comb-over back into place.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Carson, but it’s already taken.”

So it was back to Mr. Carson. Son of a bitch.
I should have walked away from this. I didn’t really need it. No way was I buying the lemon he was trying to sell me, but I could’ve gone with any of the sporty models. Hell, I could’ve just gone to another dealer.
Ok. I admit it, now I’m letting you in on something. Don’t let it go to your head, asshole. I have a problem. When I get something stuck in my head, when I decide I want something, it tends to override my usual rules. That Ferrari was calling to me. It was screaming “drive the fuck out of me, William!”
“So is it paid for free and clear?”
“Well, the young lady who bought it is coming in tomorrow to sign the papers, so everything is done except for the shouting, as they say.”
Young lady? Now I was intrigued. See what I mean? A guy with common sense would have just taken the car he was offering and gotten the hell out of dodge.
Never claimed to have common sense.
“Could this young lady be convinced to part with such a fine motor vehicle?”
He sputtered a bit, his jowls shaking. “That’s irregular, but for a customer such as yourself….” He looked through his appointment book, sausage fingers flipping the pages.
“Here we go. She should be here tomorrow at 2pm. Keira Coughlan.”
I handed Larry my card. “Have her give me a call if she’s able.”
There was no point wasting more time with Larry. I had places to be. I like to keep busy. It’s a habit from high school. I left the dealership and hailed a cab to head back to my hotel.
I’d ditched my car once I got back into town from Colorado. It’s never a good idea to keep the same ride or the same look for very long. I never keep the same look, either. In Denver, I wore a double-breasted suit with a vest underneath and Windsor knot ties. I shaved my head, which was why my hair was still short now. I decided to keep a pair of large reading glasses to make my face look smaller.
Now I wore light colored suits and silk shirts. I never left my hotel room without my shades, and I was always on my cloned cell phone making random calls.
I’ve learned the best way to hide is in plain sight. Let people see you; just don’t let them remember you in detail.
You might wonder why I didn’t go into a similar line of work, like day trading or being a Senator. Because someone like me, a former ward of the state, is part of the system. So I made some changes. I won’t go into those, but I knew I was never meant for a nine-to-five gig.
Some of us are meant for greater things.
I usually pick a hotel close to an expressway on-ramp or an airport. You always need an exit strategy. Not every sucker is unaware of being fleeced, and not all of them are too embarrassed to report it. Some even take matters into their own hands and try to go after their victimizer all on their lonesome.
Would you believe I’ve never had that problem? I always pick targets who can afford to lose what they lose. It helps to also pick people or groups of people who have already gone through embarrassing scandals and can’t afford the added embarrassment.
When I was sixteen, I ended up in juvie. I got pinched for holding up a grocery store. I would’ve gotten away with it, had the guy behind the counter not been an off-duty cop doing a favor for his uncle, the owner of the store. One second I’m pointing a shaky gun at the cashier, the next second I’m disarmed and his knee is on my skinny little neck. My career as a stick-up kid began and ended at the Evergreen Grocery Mart.
My first night in juvie, two huge kids decided it would be fun to play hide the salami with me. They paid off one of the guards to look the other way and would’ve succeeded had an even bigger kid not stepped in. I wasn’t quite sure what happened, but one second, the two kids were blocking my door, the next second the bigger kid was flinging them around like a shark grabbing a surfer.
That bigger kid was named Dionysus M. Wallace (I never asked what the M. was for…did it really matter when someone is named after a Greek god of booze?) and I wasn’t certain why he decided to protect me.
“I don’t like rapists.” That was his only reply.
He wasn’t much of talker. Not like me. All I did was talk. About my big plans to be rich by the time I turned 21, my made-up family life outside of the detention facility, all the girls I’d supposedly been with (biggest lie of all). If Dionysus knew he was lying, or hated liars as much as he hated rapists, he gave no indication.
What little he learned of Dionysus was this. He was also sixteen, was planning to enlist in the Marines as soon as he got out, and was a Golden Gloves champion back in Brooklyn. He got arrested for beating the crap out of a guy who had assaulted his sister. His sister was fine now, but the guy he beat up would be wearing a diaper for the rest of his life. Right at the moment he told me that story, I resolved to never, ever piss him off.
After my stint in juvie, I decided to never get involved in a crime where I had to hold a gun or risk bodily harm. I went back to school, and as soon as I got my GED, I started taking classes, not all of them at the same school. I proctored some, some I managed to get financial aid for. A year after my release, I was in Chicago, hunting for work, hoping my Associates Degree might open a few doors.
I knew I was wasting my time when I went for a job interview and the subject of my arrest came up. It’s one thing to have a misspent youth, but pulling a gun on a cop, even by accident, is something frowned upon by most people in the safe life. After being turned down for the fifth job I applied for, I decided to change my game plan.
That was when I met Persia.
Two
Does it matter what her last name was?
I was down to my last twenty bucks, wearing a thrift store suit and a sad frown. As I stood on the corner, hands shoved into my pockets to fend off the cold, I felt her standing next to me. I turned and looked into the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen, set in a face with honey-colored skin and soft purple lips. The contrast should have been jarring, but only served to make her even more striking. She brushed her long, curly, thick mane of hair away from her eyes and smiled at me.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little lost. Do you know how to get to 7th and Wisconsin?”
Of course she wasn’t actually lost. She knew exactly where she was going, and where I was going, and just what would happen to me if she didn’t give me an attractive detour.
She was wearing a black leather jacket and a skirt that looked like it was painted on. Her shapely legs were clad in black hose, ending in calf-high boots as dark as the jacket. It took her maybe five seconds to get my name, then another minute to convince me to go to lunch with her. I wasn’t very canny then, told her that I didn’t have much money. She didn’t care. Her eyes actually lit up when I told her I was broke, you believe that shit? She had her hooks into me, and she knew it. I was a blank canvas and she was motherfucking Rembrandt.
She took me to this quiet diner where inveterate gamblers go to grumble into their coffee, sat me down at a table and broke it down to me: I could earn twenty thousand dollars in one month working with her. She wasn’t trying to turn me out, she didn’t sell drugs, and if I wanted to walk away right this second, I could. Of course she said this with her long legs in full view, her jacket off, showing me her purple silk shirt unbuttoned, ample breasts straining against the fabric. What were the odds of a poverty-stricken twenty-one year old walking away from her? Let’s just say that even the losers at the lunch counter couldn’t lose if they bet against it.
Persia drove a Porsche as jet-black as her hair, and almost as beautiful as her body. Sitting next to her, my hands finally warming, I asked her where we were going.
“You can stay at my place tonight. I insist.”
Anything beat the group home, but people might wonder where I was. I quickly put these fears aside as she accelerated down Lake Shore Drive.
Her place was a two-bedroom condo off of the Drive. For about four years, I’d lived in a cell smaller than the bathrooms in that place. I was clearly nervous. She offered me a drink, to calm my nerves. I was worried I’d spill it on the carpeting. She ran down a list I was used to, then. Did I snort, shoot or smoke anything? Did I take pills? Had I ever caught anything from unprotected sex? No, no, and no. When she asked me if I’d ever done a bid, I told her upfront, prepared to be shown the door and to end up right back in the cold.
When I’d finished the story of my misspent youth, she sat down on the couch next to me and eyed me with curiosity.
“You don’t seem like the type to pick up a gun.”
“I needed money and food and no one was willing to hire a skinny sixteen year old kid.”
“I’m just saying, you don’t seem like a smash and grab thug. I think you could do much better for yourself if you didn’t always take the easy way out.”
“What are you selling? You grab me off the street, offer me a bunch of money, but you don’t tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
I remember thinking what kind of stupid question is that? What I said was something more like: “Of course I do.”
“All some men, and women see, is a pretty girl with a nice body. So they never see me coming. How do you think I got this place? Not on my back. I take money from people, but not at gunpoint, and using just my brain. Deep down, they want to give me their money? This place, I could leave in a second and pick up in another city, and get a better place. That’s what the hell you’re doing here. I’m going to teach you how to do the exact same thing. You can work with me, and once you make your ten kay, you can stay or split, but you’ll owe me, you understand? If and when I need a favor, you’ll have to honor it.”
She told me about how she knew who the real me was, how I’d have to change who I was, how Persia wasn’t her real name, but close enough. During that whole monologue, she had been edging closer to me on the couch until she was sitting right next to me. Her voice never went above a whisper. She wasn’t angry; she was excited, like a jungle cat closing in on its prey. I could smell the perfume on her neck. She was rubbing my thigh and slowly sliding her hand closer to my crotch. I was praying she wouldn’t touch it and hoping she would all at once. When she finally did, she let out a cross between a laugh and a yelp of surprise. She rubbed my hardness through my pants, eliciting gasps and moans I couldn’t control.
“I know you want to fuck me. But I want to hear it. I want you to say it.”
I shook my head, all the while wanting to rip her clothes from her body and bury my face between her thighs.
“That’s how we seal the deal. Tell me.”
Even then, I thought, what the fuck? Just fuck me. I’d been with a few girls before her, but it was all straightforward. A little playing around, some kissing and then furtive sex before we got caught. This was different. There were no parents around to catch us. She had the time and inclination to play little head games, in more ways than one.
“I want to fuck you.”
Triumphant, she straddled me, unzipping my pants and pulling me free. No preamble, no foreplay. She pulled her panties aside, and slid me into her, moaning loudly. I ripped her shirt off and cupped her breasts, smothering myself with her scent and skin. Before I had a chance to fully appreciate what was happening, I came inside her.
I expected her to be mad or disappointed, but she looked at me with something akin to admiration.
“Some men would be too self-conscious to finish like that the first time. I can tell you really do want me.”
Hell yes, I did. We tried three more times that night, once even out on her balcony overlooking the city and the lake, her looking back at me, big brown eyes urging me to go faster, harder, inside her from behind skin and sex slapping together, locked together, animal grunting and beautiful sweat.
After she and I reached our quota of orgasms, she gave me more details, punctuating her points by rubbing my body and hers.
She’d been taught by a master grifter, a man who could have conned his way past St. Peter. She laid out the rules I’d have to live by, the way I’d have to not only work, but live my life. Once you commit to the life, that was it, you were in the life all day, every day. Let the mask slip and you’re back in pajamas provided by the state.
Persia knew high society people. She’d grown up around them, possibly because her mother was a domestic who’d made the mistake of getting knocked up by her boss. They were basically gypsies, going from home to home, her mother working while Persia lived in the guest house and played with the white children.
When Persia was fifteen years old, she managed to convince a very rich man that she was Bill Cosby’s daughter. She never explained why she decided to scam him. Maybe she’d gotten fed up with old, rich white men ogling her ass. Maybe she wanted to be someone important for once instead of a maid’s daughter. No matter, the result was the same. Before she was done with him, he was willing to pay her eighty thousand dollars to keep quiet. Carnal knowledge of a minor is still illegal, even if it is with a famous man’s daughter.
That’s when she figured it out. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. Any girl could be pretty or sexy. Persia was smart and scary. She could reduce a grown man to tears with a well-placed word. She could do with language and a suggestion just as much, if not more, as she could do with her swinging hips. Over the next fifteen years, she flirted on the fringes of the “respectable” world.
When I got over my infatuation and began to listen, truly listen to her, I became an apt pupil. We spent six months in Chicago, working an development deal with a local firm looking to build low-cost housing on land designated as historical. That was the game. Find someone greedy, with questionable motives, and bleed them dry. After those six months, we were flying to the West Coast.
Persia changed her hair to an incongruous Louise Brooks bob and started going by the name Shante LaRue. We began auditioning participants for a reality show that didn’t exist, renting out a hotel penthouse, having them all live in close quarters. As Persia’s assistant, my job was to keep them confused and at each other’s throats. An innuendo here, a rumor there. All of the participants were, at best, D-list celebrities looking for greater fame. Some were just people on the fringes, trust fund babies who thought rubbing elbows with Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid meant they were stars, too.
I can admit it, I hated them. Sure, we were ripping them off, but I found their self-indulgent whining and constant infighting tiresome and pointless. If they’d spent a few years in a roach and rat-infested apartment while their mother sucked off a john, they might be a little nicer to each other. The “show” ended abruptly when the hotel asked when we were going to pay the bill, and if we had a permit to film there.
I’m sure they’re still looking for us, but the publicity they received in the local press actually made a few of them B-listers.
Persia gave me a ticket and told me to meet her in Miami. I wasn’t sure why we were traveling on separate planes, but maybe she thought things were a little hot.
When I got to Miami, I got a telegram from her telling me not to look for her, that she’d taught me all she could, and at this point, staying together was more of a liability than a good thing. People like us, she said, don’t keep close ties with anyone or anything.
She never actually said goodbye.
I remembered the telegram slipping from my hand, the other hand gripping a bag full of clothes and money and not much else, wondering if I was supposed to feel free. It pisses me off that I can still think of her fondly. That’s some fucked up shit.
Three
There was an old white guy waiting for me in the lobby of my hotel.
I usually make a point to tip the staff of any hotel I’m staying in, with the explicit instruction that I don’t want any surprises. I’m not expecting any relatives to drop in on me; I don’t have any girlfriends I’m expecting to see. Anyone asking for me, unless I’ve mentioned them previously, they’re goddamn liars.
I must not have tipped enough for someone’s taste, because somehow this guy was waiting for me, and clearly made a beeline for me when I came through the revolving door. I began to look for convenient escape routes and walked past him.
He was dressed all in bright green, his leisure suit a gaudy anachronism against the pastel and metallic décor. I pretended not to see him, but he insisted on talking to me.
“If I could have a minute of your time…”
I spun and stared him down. “You couldn’t afford a second of my time. Now blow.”
“I’m afraid I must be very insistent upon communicating this delicate matter to you.”
“I’m insistent that you get lost before I call security.”
The old guy ran a trembling hand through his thinning comb over, and tried his best to smile. “Mr. Carson, I’m certain you have about as much a desire to contact security as I do. We can be cordial and behave like civilized men, or I can be very…not cordial.”

He pulled back the lapel of his suit and showed me his holstered .44, careful to make certain that only I saw it.
I suddenly found an opening in my morning’s schedule.
Once we were in my room, I began wondering how I could get out or stall him until I could get a message to someone. He was old, I would guess in his fifties or sixties. I wasn’t as young as I used to be, but only in my early thirties. I could probably overpower him.
“Don’t let my age and stature fool you, Mr. Carson. And don’t try anything funny.”
His sudden ESP made me queasy. They at least knew my nom du voyage. What else did they know? Likely my character trait of protecting myself, so getting shot was not something I was interested in accomplishing today.
The old man took his .44 out of the holster and pointed it at me. His hand was a lot steadier than mine had been at sixteen. He waved it at me.
“Sit down over there in the easy chair, where I can see you.”
He sat down at the table across from the easy chair and smiled.
“Nice suite. I wonder how much it cost them.” I thought about saying something sarcastic, but decided I liked my body without bullet holes. “Do you recognize me, Mr. Carson?”
“I have to say I’ve never laid eyes on you until today.”
“Well, we’ve met. I wouldn’t expect a jet-set fellow like yourself to recall, but I worked for one of the investors you ripped off in Denver.”
I was beginning to get the picture. In full 8 x 11 glossy format.
“Did you ever stop to think that men like my former boss have people to support? Employees who count on pensions? When you bled them dry with your little shell game, most of the gentlemen had to close up shop in several cities. Me? I worked security…”
He pulled back the safety. I had made the mistake of shifting my weight as if I were going to leap at him. It was the furthest thing from my mind; I was just twitchy from having a gun pointed at me. My nervousness was about to get me killed.
“I warn you, Mr. Carson, I’m an excellent shot at fifty feet. This close, I can’t possibly miss. As I was saying, I worked security. More than that, I was in charge of running the background check on you. So you can imagine how humiliated I must be right now and how this has ruined my life.”
I was wishing I’d never gone to Denver. I’d broken one of the biggest rules of the long con: don’t get greedy. Take only what you can carry, and always make certain not to leave too much wreckage in your wake. So, I’d actually broken two rules. And now this former security chief was about to put more lead in my diet.
“I’d like nothing better than to shoot you right now and let the chips fall, but I need you.”
Wait….what?
“If you need money to replace your pension, I can…”
“No! It’s not about money, you son of a bitch! My daughter has been kidnapped.”
He was agitated, and I was beginning to think his promise not to perforate me might be short-lived.
“So go to the cops. What do you expect me to do?”
He clenched his jaw and shook his head.
“I expect you to shut up and listen, punk.”
I actually wanted to rush him now, make him eat the gun, but I kept my ego in check. Let him play Dirty Harry until I could find a way out of there.
“The cops can’t help me. They think my daughter is working for these creeps. But I know better. You’re a crook; you know how these bastards think. I want you to pay them off and get her back.”
“Get her back, how? Where? And from whom?”
“From Francis Masters.”
It took a supreme effort of will to not throw up.
A little history lesson: Francis Masters is the son of Frederick Masters, Russian-German heir to a vast, old world fortune. Their Americanized name hid a past connected to kings and would-be conquerors. The great-grandfather of the clan likely found humorous irony in the choice of last name. The Masters name was synonymous with a multimillion dollar business, but also with something scarier than the stock market: the Russian Mob.
They made no secret of their connections. They thrived on them. Who would be willing to break off a business deal with someone who could have your family wiped out with a phone call? The FBI and local police couldn’t prove anything, and many of the men who made up the Russian Mob in the state were considered legitimate businessmen otherwise. Sure, a few people had turned up missing, but they were all scumbags anyway, right?
There were also rumors that the cops were on the Masters’ payroll. It would explain a lot.
“Are you out of your mind?” It didn’t matter if the guy shot him. He’d be dead either way.
“No, I’m not. And you are going to help me.”
“Let me tell you how this will play out. You’ll try to get your daughter back, and they’ll give her back to you. A piece at a time. You can’t bargain with someone who doesn’t believe in ever losing.”